The present invention relates to an endoscope system in which an image of an object is formed on an imaging device of an electronic endoscope and displayed on a monitor.
Conventionally, an electronic endoscope has an imaging device, such as a CCD (Charge Coupled Device), and a display device, such as an LCD monitor. Some recent electronic endoscopes also have an output for transmitting a video signal to a peripheral device, such as an external image processing device, external display device or image recording device.
In general, the image is displayed on a portion of the monitor or external display device. The size of the image depends on the size and resolution (i.e., number of pixels) of the imaging device, which in turn depends on the type of endoscope being used.
If only a portion of an entire image frame is required to be processed, then the processing the entire image data will be inefficient. Conversely, if only a portion of the image data is processed, but all of the image data should be processed, it will not be possible to view the entire image.
A similar problem arises when the image data is recorded. If all the image data is recorded even though only a portion of the image data is required, then more memory or data storage capacity of the recording medium is used than would otherwise be necessary. Conversely, if image data corresponding to a portion of the image is recorded, but all of the image data should be recorded, then an incomplete image will be recorded.